Once
by KitCat Italica
Summary: One final chance for all they wanted, before the world comes crashing down. Sequel to A Particular Question, final part of the series. Basically a PWmuchP, very NSFW. Oh, and BatmanxJoker graphic slash, obviously.


Once

**Also known as "The Greatest Porn KitCat Italica Has Ever Written." xD Actually, it has come to my attention that I have only written two porno fics for Batman/Joker (and really, two porno fics PERIOD, for that matter), this one being the second. The first was Lessons, which was fun, not gonna lie. But it had no going all the way. And I'd like to believe that I've become a better writer with more man-on-man sex education since then. And that fic was done on a whim while sick, while THIS has been PLANNED. Like, for a few weeks. Because I'm a perv like that who fantasizes various parts of this fic when she should be paying attention in her Precal class. :3 And this is part of an actual storyline that has significant events to back it up, instead of a blatant PWP. So, I'd like to believe it's better. It's certainly the longest thing I've ever written. Feedback makes me feel loved, even if it's hate-feedback. :)

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Joker jumped up the steps three at a time, counting them as he climbed. _Sixty-three, sixty-six, sixty-nine…heheheh…seventy-five…_ If he had known how many stairs there were in total up to the twelfth and highest floor of the hotel, he would have been counting down instead. Counting how many steps still lay between him and the place he would meet his Bat again.

He hadn't been quite this excited for a long while. Sure, the thought of tying another knot around the thread of his precious Batman's fate with his own was exhilarating in its own right, but this time was even more exceptional by far.

Because this time, it was _the Batman_ that had instigated it.

For once he had realized that it was Bruce that owned the hotel whose keycard he had found in his jacket pocket, it had been so painfully obvious who had paved the way for his escape he just couldn't stop grinning about it. It had been _the Batman_ that had disconnected his IV, and had probably even mixed up the drugs contained within to provide a less potent sedative, explaining his exquisitely clear thought processes immediately after waking. It had been _the Batman_ that had cleared the necessary hallways of all staff: immediately after escaping, Joker had learned that Wayne Enterprises, as one of the primary corporate benefactors, had called an impromptu mandatory meeting for all staff members of the madhouse. And he was willing to bet his claim to Gotham's soul that it had been _the goddamn Batman_ that had folded his suit up neatly for him in the storage room, waiting for its owner to discover it, and with it the keycard that he now gripped in his hand as he climbed. The number 1254 now rang through his mind along with his stair count, as he mapped out in his head the hallway once he got to the twelfth floor, making his way to the twenty-seventh door on the right, the green light flashing to allow him admittance, and once he got there would be…

…_the Batman._

And after that would be, he was certain, when Batman would leap forward to give him the beating of his life for daring to ask him such a personal and mocking question, one that he couldn't answer without risking changing everything about who he was, warping his very essence until he was no longer the sacrificial protector of Gotham as he was destined to be.

The thought of the Bat flying at him with such unadulterated rage made him giggle breathlessly in giddy anticipation. For it was _certainly_ what awaited him, of that he had no doubts. Because for the Batman to have broken him out of Arkham, all for the purpose of meeting with him alone…

…maybe it would _finally_ show him the fullest extent of what the clown had always known he was capable of. For even at his worst displayed thus far, Bruce had only barely scratched the surface, a fact that the clown had been fully aware of from his first punch received at Dent's fundraiser all those years ago. It was that monster that the Joker had been intent on drawing out from its dark cave, baiting it to release itself completely, and in doing so proving beyond any doubt that _they were the same._

That belief was the Joker's ultimate principle. The one truth resonating through the core of his being, even when anyone else attempted to deconstruct and whittle his other ravings of anarchy away. That was the one thing he possessed that no one could _ever_ take from him. His most treasured blessing.

And his most prized agony.

For that night, last year on Valentine's Day, his world had been shaken to its core. Something he was used to enacting upon _other_ people, and was thus quite unaccustomed to feeling himself.

That night he had almost died. Again. And the Batman had saved him, but not for the first time. Just another night in the life of the Joker. And he had reveled in it as he always did, smiling all the way.

Until…

…_that._

The softest and most desperate contact, in which he had become lost to its power, and through which it had pounded within him, fiercer than ever before, just how _true_ his dearest belief had become.

The next few weeks were a crystalline blur in his memories, filled with his shock at the new revelations creeping up on him, for he had never felt the bond with his Bat reverberating quite so strongly within him as he had then. It was so overpowering a rebirth that he hadn't even had the thought to leave his dump of a hiding place and continue with the grandiose plans for the city he'd dreamt up during his last stay in Arkham. His mind was racing through abstract thoughts he couldn't fit a name to, and his soul was building such a fortissimo of indescribable and utterly confusing epiphanies until they finally reached their climax…

…and so did he.

His body had been unable to keep up with what his spirit had culminated to, and thus it released everything pent up inside him in the best way it knew how. But still it left him empty, still craving more that wasn't there, except maybe the _next _time he'd reach whatever it was he was searching for…

This endless cycle of internal chaos raged on for three weeks, as he neglected the rest of the city to ponder whatever it was that simple kiss had stirred within him. Thoughts of Batman had consumed him at that point, and he had in an act of near-desperation snuck up to the roof of the MCU, to the Batsignal. The one piece of Bat he could gain access to without any impediment.

But then at last, one act of voyeurism later, a soft and intimate touch had parted the clouds and revealed just what the object of his quest had been all along. It had been too delirious an emotion to be put into words, other than the fabled phrase he had spoken to the Batman long ago, the meanings of which he was realizing were more powerful than even _he_ had been aware of at the time.

_You, complete…me._

But then it was gone, untimely ripped from existence before it had even begun. And with that, a part of him shut down. He would spend the next six months laughing to himself at the memories, and proceeding with his schemes as per usual, finding the same intense highs at watching a citizen come undone; a family destroyed; a populace forced to its knees; a building collapse; an explosion wreaking havoc; an edifice of society obliterated in one fell swoop. As always, the infamous flying rodent was the force of formidable resistance, but the feel of holding two similarly-charged poles of magnets together and forcing them closer as that same intangible opposition pushed back at you – that was what he _lived_ for. It was a delight in disorder only he could truly flourish in, and in that knowledge he threw his head back and roared his laughter to the world, heedless if it heard him or not.

But once again, his ego was thrown out of orbit as his eyes were burned with the most sinfully wrong image he had ever seen. Now, the Joker was one who _knew_ what was and wasn't possible – by taking one look at a person he possessed the uncanny ability to pinpoint exactly what kind of a person they were, and just what words, body language, and innocuous actions would push them over the edge. He could find a person's buttons better than anyone, and one of his chief joys in life was pressing them, uncoiling their pretentions and façades before they could think twice about it. He _knew_ what a person had the potential to become, and what the options were of what could very well happen to them if given the right circumstances.

And the Batman becoming a rape victim was _not_ one of those options.

So that September night at the pier, when an image impossible even to _his_ imagination was set in undeniable _reality_ before him…the shut-down area of his soul had rebooted. And with it, a wrath that could only be fueled by its newfound source, which he didn't take a second to comprehend until after the fact, when the unspeakable (albeit quite normal for a man like him) deeds were done.

September and October had been horrible for Batman, he knew, but he had found himself suffering just has much, to his great surprise. Of course he had foreseen that not having Batman around to counteract his every move would make for some less enjoyable times in the city, but what had caught him off-guard was just _how_ much it affected him. His one purpose in life was supplanted by nothing but smoke. And his body had begun physically _aching_, _burning_ for the crusader's presence again. In time, he spent more and more of his days in his hastily-chosen shelters, growing listless for any sort of schemes, acting out in random spurts of violence even more often than before, almost in halfhearted hopes it would shake him out of this newfound apathy. But nothing. Nothing but thoughts of Batman – wishes that he could recover faster and be back out there tonight where he belonged; howls of fury at the eighteen dead men who had been responsible for the two freaks' mutual agony; sleepless nights in front of a computer reading up on anything he could about Bruce Wayne, discovering how all the puzzle pieces about his behavior lined up with his past experiences; images in his mind's eye of the face that could launch more ships by far than that ditzy half-wit Helen; memories of those ardently grateful lips against his again, drawing more extended fantasies and utter _longing_ than was probably healthy…

That same hurricane of turmoil in his soul chased him underground again, and once more he was a slave to its whims, and when they demanded an outlet in the physical realm of things, he felt no choice but to comply. He sometimes wondered if this torturous anguish was what he forced upon Bruce every night of his life just by the foul deeds he enacted upon the city around the clock, and if he hadn't been in the grip of such all-consuming need he would have laughed out loud at the irony…

Then, one night, his Batman was back. And he felt his being come alive again like never before. The game was back, the chase was on, and there was a chance that if Bruce's experiences while they were apart held any slight similarities to his own – which they had to, for _they were the same_ – and if he found the cravings just as impossible to ignore as he himself did now…

But he got nothing. Nothing but the same frenzied rampage that he'd experienced in the interrogation room, or the Prewitt Building. _Nothing had changed_. Months ago he would have jubilated in this fact, that in the face of it all the greatest gift to be bestowed upon him would never be taken away, and would never change. He and his Batman were destined to dance this way forever. Except now, under these newfound circumstances that the three nights had set in motion…

…he _wanted_ things to change.

Somehow, he didn't know how, for any move towards what he had craved for so long now would involve them changing their inherent natures, who and what they really _were_. And that would defeat the purpose altogether. And at one point in the fight, he saw that knowledge in the Batman's eyes, and knew his own portrayed the same. The hurt they saw, mirrored in each other's expressions, sent them both into a greater fury at everything in existence except the other, but of course the universe had long decreed that their frustrations were always to be taken out upon the other, regardless of motives or victors. He had been knocked out, and awoke to a broken nose.

And maybe something else had been broken besides that, but such clichés were not for the two of them.

The next few months went on as routinely as they always did (at least, in as much of a routine as Gotham City could hope for), except this time Joker was finding that he couldn't shut down his yearning any longer. It was too tightly entwined with his grand purpose in the world, with the foundations of his very _existence_, that to cut it away would involve severing his place in the world altogether. And it would mean destroying his deepest-held belief.

Something snapped within him one night. He couldn't stop this anymore, so he might as well go with it as he always did and see where the ride took him. He knew about Bruce Wayne, and thus he knew every last chink in Batman's armor in full. Including a certain butler whom he relied upon beyond anyone else.

It was too simple.

But when Batman had confronted him at last, he had found himself wrested of his upper hand on the situation, and of his own volition too. There were no pretentions anymore, which looking back was how he preferred things anyway. Nothing but baring what he wanted, and seeing what would come of it.

And what came of it was the Batman's little boys in blue following their obvious tip-off from the crusader, and clapping him in irons to Arkham once again.

And now the Bat wanted to meet with him alone, and from what the Joker had discerned of the hotel's top three floors being reserved by its wealthy owner, he was preparing a _brutal_ combat. It only made sense that the Batman would want to meet on his own terms, where he was in complete control of the situation. Just doesn't like to get out of his comfort zone, now does he?

But Joker would play his game for now. He always played Batman like his favorite videogame anyway, so a little pretense of power in the knight's hands would make the final punchline all the more hilarious. For as everyone knows, the Joker holds all the cards behind his back.

Besides, he was going toward the presence of his purpose in the world. His source of everything. His antithesis. His only equal. His fellow god. _His_ god. The man he was chained to, and for whose sake he would do all in his power to safeguard that chain against anything the world threw at it.

Finally, he reached Step 240, the final step to the twelfth floor. He had contemplated taking the elevator, but decided against it; even though the top three floors were reserved for Wayne's purposes, there were still nine floors left full of guests and housekeeping maids. Any other night he would have seen who the elevator would have taken him to, and would have had a little fun on his way up to visit his Bat. But he wasn't quite ready yet for Gotham City to know he was out of his cell, and besides, tonight should be just him and Batman. This night belonged only to the two of them, and to keep it that way a more discreet approach to the meeting place was required. Of course, the stairs were only put in place for mandatory fire escape routes; no self-respecting guest of this exquisite hotel of luxury would be caught dead hiking it up the stairs when they could expend less effort on an elevator. So thanks to the snobbish nature of the wealthy, the Joker reached the twelfth floor undetected.

He entered the elegant hallway and padded past the doors, searching the even numbers on the right side for the numeral desired. He knew it would be the twenty-seventh door on the right, but at the same time he almost felt like smashing every neat number plate beside the door for not reading 1254. His eyes scanned wildly ahead, his breath speeding with every door he passed, until at last he arrived at 1254, the only door that had a faint light emanating underneath.

He grinned as he slid the keycard into the slot, lighting up inside as the green light flicked on once the card withdrew. _Green means go_, he smirked as he turned the door handle, an invisible hand constricting his insides in divine anticipation…

Batman had been sitting on the edge of the hotel bed for what was close to an hour now, but he knew the clock was lying and that he had in actuality been sitting here in gut-clenching anticipation for _years_ now. It was not just 10:04 PM now, it couldn't be. All the while his mind had been chanting _Where is he?_ to him, as if when it asked him enough times he would break down and spew out the answer to his nagging subconscious voice. He had been filled with chewing doubts this whole time, wondering whether the Joker had escaped Arkham by now, or if he had been caught, or if he hadn't yet noticed the keycard in his pocket and was plotting to blow up his manor right now while he sat here uselessly in this hotel room, doing nothing…

But now the door had opened, as he had been praying and dreading it to for the past hour. And the man in purple, complete with a fresh coat of greasepaint and newly-dyed hair, walked into the room with something akin to a knowing swagger, meeting his eyes gleefully.

The door thudded shut behind him, and all was silent in the room.

Upon noticing that the Batman hadn't yet moved from his sitting position, Joker waved his keycard in his hand before resting it on a nearby table, as if to say _Don't forget, you asked for this._ Batman still didn't move. Joker's eyebrows raised and a breath of a smirk left his nostrils, then he turned behind him and reached for the deadbolt lock. As an afterthought, he also flipped the latch that only allowed the door to open ajar an inch, as if ensuring that everything between them tonight boiled down to only them, and them alone. He heard Batman rise from the bed behind him, and his grin spread even wider. _That's right, give me what we want_, he thought to himself as he turned around, expecting to be greeted next with the sight of Batman flying at him in a flurry of cape, fists, and fury. As usual.

He did not expect to be greeted with the sight of Batman undoing the clasps of his breastplate until it fell to his feet before him.

Joker's mind went on lockdown as his face melted from an expression of glee to one of shock. His green eyes stared wide and almost unseeing at the impossible image before him. He wasn't processing what his Bat was doing, for he shouldn't _need_ to process…_this_…

The piece of Kevlar rested at Batman's feet as he raised his eyes to the Joker's, which were frozen on him in a state of pure disbelief. He slowly sidestepped the armor and walked over to the clown, as he'd done last year in March on top of the MCU. But this time with exact opposite purposes in mind.

Once again, he was nose-to-nose with his enemy, who was giving him another expression that normally didn't belong there, not with someone like _him_. Pleading, concern, shock – none of these things were what the Joker consisted of. But he had now seen all three on that same madman's face at one point or another, and this last one was what he needed to awaken him from.

Joker stood frozen in place as Batman reached to his own neck and slid his cowl off his head, letting it fall to the floor between them as he raised his now-bare face to the jade deer-like eyes, the eyes that were asking him urgently: _What are you doing?_

Then, softly, so soft it surprised both of them, Bruce slid his hands to Joker's shoulders, underneath his two jackets to lie atop the green vest. He moved his hands down those long arms, taking the waistcoat and overcoat with him, hearing the unmistakable clinks of metal as knives jarred together within the descending fabric. Joker still wasn't moving, and the coats had to be pulled off his wrists by Bruce alone, and when the action was finally done and the jackets fell to the floor behind the clown, Bruce's gloved hands lingered at Joker's own. His eyes moved to the two hands, which he had dreamed consistently of entwining together while still clad in the same respective purple and black hues they were encased in now, but this was different. This was _real_. This tickling heat he felt at the cautious touches of his own hands on Joker's was _real_. His eyes weren't lying to him as he made to wrap his fingers around loose and frozen digits.

Nor were they lying to him as he watched and felt those digits unfreeze, and grab his own as their hands laced together, sending waves of heat and something else far more potent through them both.

His eyes widened a tad at the reaction he had been waiting for, then brought them up to the Joker's, who was staring at him still, but instead of shock his eyes now looked at him with…_wonderment_. With a curious glow that almost asked for a reality check, and if what he was now experiencing with the other was really allowed under the rulings of their fate.

Bruce had learned more from the Joker these past few years than he'd cared to admit. He knew that this wasn't supposed to happen, that it wasn't a part of their destiny. That what was going to happen tonight – what he'd _planned_ to happen tonight – in this hotel room was for the first and last time. There was only one shot at this, for that was all they could hope to make allowances for. Their inner natures wouldn't let anything go further than this night. But what he had learned from the Joker was a hatred for the system he had discovered, for the supposed status quo that they had unwittingly forced themselves into, which was hardly quo at all in light of the yearnings it had produced. And most of all, he had learned that the ruling of the universe – that this wasn't ever supposed to happen between two people as vastly opposed to each other as they were – was meant to be, _had_ to be, broken.

If only for one night.

He brought his right hand up to Joker's face, just as he had last year in March, and brought his lips to his in a tender, slow kiss. He could feel the shift in Joker, the way his body uncoiled and pressed ever so slightly closer to his own, the exact moment his eyes closed as well, as he reciprocated in equal softness. His neglected left hand reached up to the brown locks he had wanted so desperately to touch and feel since first seeing them last September at the pier, and the hands that still interlaced together squeezed each other warmly as tongues slid out to meet each another. And with their kiss was written a silent pact, that they would cheat fate and beat the odds of all the world tonight, and risk losing it all for this one chance of what they sought after to be fulfilled. If once was all they could allow, then they'd take the chance they had.

One final chance for all they wanted, before the world came crashing down.

They released each other's lips gradually, pausing for a chance at each other's breath before they opened their eyes to the other's trembling gaze. Bruce was the first to move, and with a quiet exhale he moved his eyes and hands to Joker's vest, undoing all the buttons. Right before he reached the last button, Joker began to reach to Bruce's armor, and busied himself with his own task of undoing all the clasps to the Kevlar at his stomach. Both intently focused on their work, unconsciously breathing quicker in the otherwise-silent room, and the armor fell off to reveal the new mesh layer underneath, just as the vest slid off Joker's shoulders, the suspenders dragged down with it to hang loosely at his sides.

Next Bruce's fingers moved to the orange-yellow tie, working the knot as he kept his mind solely fixed upon the task at hand. Joker reached to Bruce's sides, working to take off the armor in larger chunks to allow a more efficient progress. His purple gloves worked in their trail up Bruce's sides, pushing sections of Kevlar to the side and letting them fall to the floor, and soon the cape followed them as well, no longer held in place by armor or cowl.

Bruce felt the whoosh of his cape falling to the floor as he finally loosed the tie from Joker's neck, and lingered at his throat in a gesture that normally would have set anyone on edge, but both knew that such would not be Bruce's intentions tonight. Nor would they ever be.

His hands then fell to the top button on Joker's shirt, taking his time in the quickest manner of his life as he loosed each disc from its hole. He knew this process could just as easily have been violent, and they could have become a blinding tangle of limbs and breath and discarded clothing as they rabidly tore at each other, and he could have submitted to the feral and lusting beast within him that wanted to tear the blue hexagon-printed shirt apart and yank buttons from their stitching along the way – but that wasn't how this was working. He needed every piece of Joker's clothing intact, so when it was over they could both leave exactly as they had come, and nothing could be said of it. He knew this fact internally, for his mind was focused on nothing but each individual task at hand, almost as if protecting him from some unacceptable truth he needed to hide from. What that truth was, he wasn't sure he wanted to know just yet.

But before he could undo the third button, Joker's hands rested upon his own, halting his progress. He flicked his eyes up to Joker, but the maniac's gaze wasn't returned, rather lowered to his black gloves. Joker took his soulmate's right hand in both of his, and worked at the gauntlet that covered his lower arm until it was pried loose and fell to add to the pile of armor surrounding their feet. The base of the glove exposed, he reached to Bruce's middle finger and gently tugged the glove off and to the floor. He then did the same to Bruce's left hand, this time assisted by Bruce's other, bared hand, until the billionaire's palms lay open for Joker to see at last, and wrapped around his left wrist to loosen the buckle apparatus that held his own glove in place. Joker let him do it, marveling at the newly-strengthened heat he felt from having Bruce's glove absent, and when his own glove was peeled off his fingertips and let drop to the floor he was almost disappointed when Bruce immediately went to his right hand, instead of grasping for their heated bare palms together. But when the last of the four intrusive gloves was removed and joined the other three on the red velvet carpet, their owners stood frozen in place, ready for the other's next move.

At last they both decided to move at the same time, and in a manner almost timid, they joined their hands together in gentle grips between their chests. And the surge of connection they felt upon this physical sensation they hadn't yet chanced to experience together was enough to make them both softly gasp their shock and approval to each other. Their eyes raised to the other's, then roved to their separate tasks of removing clothing once more. Joker worked at the armor on Bruce's arms, while Bruce continued to undo the buttons of the Joker's shirt, distinctly aware of the accelerating rate at which their heartbeats were quickening.

Joker felt his shirt being untucked from his pants to be fully unbuttoned, and once finished with the armor coating Bruce's biceps his fingers roamed the mesh that separated them from the rippling torso they desired, searching for a way to remove it. Bruce's hands left the blue dress shirt then, and lifted the mesh over his head to finish the job, undoing his utility belt while he was at it. Joker took the moment of brief preoccupation to shrug his own shirt off his shoulders.

When finished with their motions, the two drank in the sight of the other's bared and certainly very scarred torso with similar stances of greed and caution. Joker could pick out every bruise and knife wound he had inflicted upon his foe in the years of fighting him, and he knew from Bruce's searching eyes that he could do exactly the same to him. Joker moved on his impulses first, and slowly reached out to a prominent ridge of a scar from a machete, just below Bruce's left pectoral. Upon the contact Bruce's eyes closed, while Joker's eyes widened. Feeling more assured in his actions, he brought both his hands to the expanse of flesh, and curiously explored the heated skin and sculpted muscles that spoke of untold hours in the sun and countless more in vigorous physical training. Both of which, from knowledge of his activities as Batman and research about his travels around the world, made sense. But the firm and defined muscles that he had only briefly glimpsed that night at the pier had never been exposed to him for his fingers' pleasure, and he pounced upon the opportunity as he traced each contour of muscle, lingering at his nipples, an act which prompted a muffled groan from Bruce's throat as his body shook with the slightest tremor.

Bruce looped his arms underneath Joker's and his hands felt their way to the clown's back, tenderly gracing along the bruise beneath his left shoulder blade that he had inflicted himself from the same steel-toed boots he wore now. Joker winced slightly at the touch on the pain-sensitive area, but found himself shivering with heat under Bruce's deft and gentle fingertips. Bruce could prominently feel the man's ribs and spine, confirming his theories about how little the clown cared to eat (not that he was much better in those regards when he was overtaken by his own duties to the city). He was quite surprised, however, at just how tanned Joker's skin really was. He supposed after seeing the face painted pale for so long, he had assumed the rest of him to be just as bleached, but it most decidedly wasn't so.

At last Bruce was the one to initiate more contact, and with one hand between Joker's shoulder blades, the other on the small of his back, he drew him closer to his own body and felt their bare chests meet flush together for the first time. He felt his breath quickly leave his body at the intimate rush of heat their combined cores produced, but his exhilarating reaction was nothing compared to what Joker felt. It was all so much for him to walk in expecting the death duel of the century, only to fifteen minutes later be willingly embraced by his enemy, both half-naked. And the calamity within his soul, upon the close proximity to Bruce's own heartbeat, beating a counterpoint rhythm to his own as he always did, only this time he could actually _feel_ it against his chest, along with every quivering, solid muscle in both their bodies pressed together, all culminated into his final outcry of emotion as what could only be equated to a sob broke past his throat, deep into Bruce's neck.

Bruce closed his eyes at the noise that pressed into his neck, and laced his higher hand that held the Joker into his dense green hair, trying to use the gentle sensation to calm them _both_ down. For he wasn't faring much better than Joker was at this point, and it took all he had to not cry out just as Joker had, but when the clown's deceptively strong arms slid from his chest and wrapped themselves around his back he couldn't contain it anymore and cried out like the clown had a moment ago. They pressed their chests together tighter, not wanting to lose each other to the immensity of what they were just beginning to discover together. Something bigger than either one of them could have envisioned before this night's events began.

The hand on the small of Joker's back reached down lower at that point, sliding to his ass in an almost chaste gesture. Joker's mind was driven almost to the brink at the act, and had to somehow find an outlet for what had spiked in his soul without warning at the contact, but was unsure whether to buck up against the hand that held him or to thrust forward into the hips against his own. But Bruce answered his question for him by pushing with his hand to force the clown's pelvis against his, and Joker's resulting hip movements satisfied both his wants with the intense pressure both in front of and behind him.

Feeling the Joker's arousal against his own suddenly brought to Bruce's attention just _how_ hard he himself had become in the past fifteen minutes of the Joker's presence and actions, and the realization drove him to capture the madman's lips with his own once again, still gentle but with an edge of need this time around. Never before had they stopped to kiss each other with such vigor, for their last three lip-on-lip contacts had been with far more peaceful messages, representing the few temporary states of truce brought on by the gestures. But now the fruits of the kisses could be had in the immediate future, and with that thought in mind Bruce and Joker began walking together to the sleeping area behind Bruce, still enveloped in each other's arms, lips, and hearts, towards the made-up bed.

When they reached the foot of the bed, Joker gently ended their liplock, and slid his arms from Bruce's back to steady himself as he crawled backwards onto the bed towards the pillows, never taking his eyes from Bruce's, urging Bruce to follow. And Bruce did, climbing onto the beige blankets on hands and knees, making his way to perch himself flush above Joker, held above him only by his own limbs. Their chests heaved in unison in anticipation to the point of nearly brushing against each other on each heavy inhale, their eyes lidded with lustful adoration of the body begging for contact with their own.

In one motion, Joker brought his hands to Bruce's face to claim his lips, just as Bruce dipped his face forward to meet Joker's. His limbs let him sink down completely on top of the clown, as bare arms and pinstriped purple legs entwined around the body of the knight. They hummed in unison at the rush of elation that coursed through their veins from their bodies pressing together so forcefully. It was as their two worlds had collided those many years ago, out of the blue and destined, and all they could do was writhe together in each other's limbs and purr in bliss at the moment they were stealing from another life, a life they could never have but nothing in hell could stop them from chasing it.

They began rocking their hips against each other, and their inevitable moans into each other's mouths that followed were part out of the sheer ecstasy of the long-sought contact, part out of the pain of never having felt it before until now, and part out of fear. Out of fear of the unshakable weight that was drowning them both, imprinted with immense truths that neither one could have foreseen when their respective campaign and crusade began. Never could they have imagined anything even remotely close to _this_, to what they were now finding within the other, and they found it released and awoken within their souls with every thrust of their hips, every bite of friction between their legs.

It was enough to make Bruce break their deep kiss, and after a heartbeat or two he rose to sit up on his knees, needing to break away from the devouring body of the Joker, who now stared up at him in puzzlement. Bruce had brought about this night of his own planning, and he had been doing his best to remain as in control of events as possible. But with this strange buildup in his soul that his and Joker's entwined bodies was causing, he knew it would crush him if he continued in the clown's arms. And so in a last gambit to remain in a semblance of control for however much longer he could, he proceeded to strip away the last of his armor by himself, with some distance between him and the Joker.

Joker shoved his disapproval of the loss of contact aside as he gazed in awe at Bruce removing his boots and depositing them on the floor at the foot of the bed behind him. Then he worked his way up from there, to the armor on his calves, knees, then thighs. Bruce worked at his armor silently and swiftly, keeping his eyes on his hands while feeling the piercing gaze of the Joker on his every motion. Once the armor on his pelvic regions was removed, he could almost _feel_ Joker's heart race faster, for now there was only a single layer of mesh that kept him from being stripped completely naked in front of his adversary. Which was something he was apprehensive about, still knowing that the Joker stood against everything he stood for, but he had simultaneously never wanted anything more in his life.

He didn't dare any further eye contact until the mesh had slid off his ankles and was abandoned to the pile of armor on the floor behind him, and from there he turned, still kneeling, to the Joker's widened eyes, chilled and naked in front of his foe. His chest heaved as he looked back at Joker, but found there was no eye contact to be reciprocated. Joker's attention was riveted on his cock, fully erect and swollen immensely out of proportion, leaking precome and flushed a reddened purple hue, straining in Joker's direction and almost visibly pulsing with his heartbeat, as achingly aroused as he was. Joker could barely take in what he was seeing, and the bulge between his own legs began to expand underneath the purple pants right before Bruce's eyes as the emerald irises took in nothing but the sight of his Batman, completely exposed for all that he was to the one that could see through him best of all. In one fluid motion, Joker curled up to his own knees and, with no preparation whatsoever, driven by some insatiable need he could never put a name to, he took Bruce's throbbing penis deep into his mouth, forcing him down his throat.

Any slight pretenses of control Bruce had still possessed at that point unwound and exploded at that moment.

He screamed at the intense agonizing euphoria the action produced, and his hands instinctively moved to bury themselves in dirty green hair to press Joker's head forward, encouraging and urging more as he arched his hips into the ruby mouth engulfing him. Joker had done what he had always done, doing away with all of Batman's layers of who he and everyone else _said_ he was, seeing him only for what he immutably _was_, and latched onto his core and his deepest resolve, sucking out everything the immovable man had to offer just as he now sucked ravenously at Bruce's swelling dick, swallowing precome in silent cries for more, _more_ of what Batman had to give him. And Bruce felt the true mutually parasitic nature of their bond come full circle as he desperately sought more of the heat he craved, more of the rolling motions of that slippery tongue around him that he had dreamed of for so long, more of everything Joker had to give him. His entire body shook violently at the blistering heat and the sheer intimacy of the act they were now engaged in, and he kept pushing Joker's head and his own hips closer together, urging deeper and _deeper_ contact between the two of them. The impossible weight of truth brought him closer and closer to the edge in a vicegrip he could barely handle without the Joker's mouth latched upon him so firmly, and a peal of a sob breached his throat in the midst of his moans, causing Joker to latch his hands even tighter around Bruce's hips.

In an attempt to pull closer to him the one that held his pleasure in his own hands, like the cruel torturer the other man was, Bruce slid his hands to the Joker's ass once again and attempted to yank his whole body closer. Upon the tug, Joker stilled his tongue and relaxed his lips, for it had come to his attention that he was still partially dressed. And he wanted nothing more at this moment than to bring to Bruce the immense joy that the sight of Bruce's own nakedness had brought _him_ minutes ago. He released Bruce's cock, much to the crusader's shuddering dismay, and began to detach his green diamond-patterned suspenders from his pants.

When he finally threw them down to the floor Bruce had regained enough of himself to notice what Joker was doing, and he was knocked breathless as Joker's eyes found his while his hand moved to unbutton his pants. The action completed as he lowered himself back to rest against the pillows once more, he reached for his zipper, only to have Bruce's hand timidly grab his own. The blue eyes were glued to where their hands were met, and Joker at length removed his hand to rest at his side, allowing Bruce this last comfort of control while he could still have a chance at it.

The zipper was carefully lowered by a hand still trembling with the aftereffects of what he had just experienced, traveling up and back down the bulge in the pants as Joker gasped sharply at the clothed contact. Bruce's fingers then traveled to fold around the waistband of both purple pants and black boxers, barely aware of the irony of what the two colors peeled away together could symbolize, and his eyes remained fixed upon those same waistbands as they were pulled downward past hips, knees, to ankles. He methodically untied the laces of the shoes that Joker still wore, pausing a heartbeat at the tip of a blade just barely protruding from the toe of the right shoe, before sliding the shoes off the feet and laying them to rest with the rest of his armor. He gripped the waistbands again, along with the tops of the garishly-patterned socks, and slid all four garments down in one fell swoop, throwing them behind him as well.

It was only then that his eyes raked up the body sprawled before him to fully take in all of Joker's panting, naked form, not making it to the eyes that stared up at him, for he became transfixed the instant he saw the beating, beet-red engorged cock that raised its oozing head up to him, begging for attention. For a moment in time that dragged on forever he found it so difficult to draw his ragged breath, so riveting and hard-hitting was the sight before him, the sight he had dreamed of so many times but was now coming irrevocably _true_. His and Joker's worlds were coming undone tonight, for better or for worse. There was no denying it now. Even if this was just for one night, it was becoming quite clear to them both that nothing would ever be the same between them after tonight's ethereal events became cemented in time forever.

He stretched himself out to lean over Joker's heavily panting chest, all the way up to his head to meet his eyes at last. And the expression he was greeted with was, once again, one of _pleading_. Just as it had been on top of the MCU, just as defenseless, but even more apprehensive than that, in light of what they stood on the brink of now. And Bruce's eyes relayed the same emotions to Joker, a fact they both knew instinctively. They were once again in their position from earlier, with Bruce's limbs all that suspended him above Joker's undulating body beneath him. Their loud breathing conveyed their desperate need for what was about to happen, and in an instant they sank into the jaws of their chosen fate, leaping at the other's body and pulling each other down, down, down into the bed.

Their naked cocks touched for the first time.

They shrieked into the other's necks that they immediately buried their faces in; all planned and anticipated actions of writhing together ceased abruptly and exited their minds. Joker's nails dug like razors into Bruce's back as his mouth hung wide open and his eyes screwed up at the pounding, burning, _searing_, brutally _agonizing_ sensation that spiked white hot blades from the base of his spine, shocking up his back and through his entire body all the way back to his groin. If the gloved hand of Batman could do as much as it had to his bare cock before, he probably should have foreseen such an exponentially increased magnitude of power at this ultimate contact. Bruce's face had split open as well, his eyes that were obscured in the pillows and Joker's neck nonetheless bulged and jolted into maximum tension with the rest of his face, his jaw fiercely clenching open at Joker's shoulder. The slightest pressure on his pubic area from Joker's hand, barred from his own flesh by leather glove and his own piece of armor, was enough to send his senses and soul into overload; why hadn't he seen _this_ coming?

Then again, how could _either_ of them have seen coming that of the new universe their colliding bodies and beliefs had created for the world of their city?

They screamed into each other's necks again, wanting to end this moment of paralysis and start moving together again, _anything_ to end the ecstasy they could barely handle from the immovable and unstoppable contact they now held in their touching cocks. The newfound sheer intimacy was proving too much for them, even more than Joker's mouth around Bruce's arousal, or Bruce's hand on Joker's ass. It was toomuchtoomuch_toomuch_, but they couldn't do anything but lay there motionless, feeling the white hot feverish coals their groins were pounding together to create, starbursting in their souls as they cried out together to no avail.

Their penises were swelling even larger at the sensations of being slotted together, pulsing even more prominently against each other, as if a final countdown until they exploded and ended each other's life as they died their little death together. And at last Joker gave his most feral cry yet just as Bruce did, and at the same moment each one broke through their cage of rapture in one movement, thrusting their hips together with such force they didn't even know they had originally possessed within their bodies. But it did nothing to move them, for they had thrusted with equal force, and no ground was gained on either side. But with their combined efforts to maintain a normal rhythm like earlier, the pressure on their groins together increased tenfold, and with it the scalding sensation on their cocks and their very souls. Finally Bruce drew back a tad, to Joker's simultaneous relief and frustration, before slamming his hips down onto Joker's, and the pace was quickly reset, though the burning of their dicks together never abated, only steadily grew with their moans and sobs.

Joker's legs wrapped around Bruce's hips, further pressing them close together, as close as they could get without melting into the other's form to become one entity entirely. They matched the rhythm the other desired perfectly, beat for beat, never out of sync of the other's innate wants. They grasped at each other's shoulders as they wailed desperately at the other's left ear, each needy noise from the other spurring them on further into the throes of their wild pleasure, found only in the other's arms at long last. Had their needs of satisfaction been purely of a physical origin, it was beyond any doubt that the sheer contact alone between them would have been enough to send them both flying into the realms of powerful multiple orgasms, so frantic was their unfulfilled longing for each other. But they both knew that it reached depths far beyond that, and that until the broken pieces of their souls were sufficiently fused together as only they could, they would never reach the climax they yearned for together. As all things did with them when together, their spirits held dominion over their bodies, and only when their essences were conjoined in the same epitome of elation could their inferior physical manifestations respond in kind.

Bruce recognized this in his gut as he rocked against Joker, all thoughts of the lubricant and condoms he had stowed in the nightstand incinerated in his mind. There was no stopping the two of them anymore; they had waited long enough, their whole _lives_, for this absolution to happen, and there weren't going to be any physical barriers between them in this final act of their ultimate union.

They needed to join together. _NOW_.

Joker felt Bruce lean up away from him, but what little protests he had fizzled in his thoughts as his knight rabidly positioned his cock at his entrance. At the first tentative prod, Joker's noises abruptly ceased, and a deathly quiet pervaded the room as instantaneously as it had left ten minutes ago. Their eyes were held prisoner to the other's laser beam gaze as the inevitable and wholly impossible happened. As Bruce's cock slowly drove into Joker's incredibly tight ass. As what had transpired so many years ago manifested itself in the flesh, as Batman had without warning forced his way into Joker's life, heedless of any protests the clown may have had at his fate being simultaneously free of that of all humanity and bound to that of one man. The man he worshipped, whose unique drumbeat was the exact same as Joker's own, just as Bruce's painfully throbbing heartbeat within his cock pounded in unison with the pulsing of the tightening walls around it of Joker's body. Their eyes never left each other, and their visages reflected each other perfectly at the new development, as their faces slowly split wide open. Joker's eyes were bulging, Bruce's mouth was gaping open, neither one could get enough air into their frenetic lungs, and the only sensation that mattered was the too tight, too constricting, too painful, too stifling, and _too fucking perfect_ feel of when Bruce was fully sheathed inside Joker.

A single tear fell down Joker's face as he gazed in such worship up at Bruce that it stole his breath away.

It was all they could do to hold onto each other as their eyes spoke untold volumes to the other man, the very fibers of who they were coalescing as never before, as Bruce moved his cock part of the way out, then pushed back in. And again, he thrust out and back in, deeper this time, never wanting to leave the overpowering heat of what the Joker had to give him. Never wanting to abandon anything the Joker had to give him. At each deep plunge of his Batman into his body, Joker's face jolted and his entire body jarred with the indescribable pleasure of heaven. Every stab at his insides never cried for abatement, but rather for another shove, and another, and another after that. And he received all that he wordlessly asked for, every single time, as Bruce moved deep within him.

They couldn't stand the absolution and worship they found dripping from the other's face, but neither could they tear away. But Bruce could see the mounting ecstasy in Joker's eyes, the way his mouth was gradually parting open wider, that soon he would die from the sensory overload of watching that face reach levels of pleasure that no human being should be able to attain. At last Joker let a long, drawn-out wail escape his throat, and at that moment both he and Bruce lurched forward to hide their faces into the crook of the other's neck again, their chosen close refuge for the emotions that became too powerful for even the likes of them.

Their new position achieved, they felt the license to move faster, and Bruce's hips slapped against Joker's own gyrating flesh at a dizzyingly fast pace. They grunted and moaned, cried and screamed into each other's shoulders, muffling their noises of bliss by sending them directly into the other's skin. The two most powerful men in Gotham City were losing control to the perfect actions of the other, winning and losing at the same time. And nothing could have felt better to the two of them than that final feeling of victory and defeat. They rubbed intense amounts of friction between their bodies, inside and out, much akin to the ever-present friction created when they rose up to do battle with one another. But this was their struggle bared to its most elemental form, and its perfection and beauty was something they could never ask the other to stop if they wanted to. And they certainly didn't want to.

Joker's neglected cock scraped its tip against Bruce's stomach as they moved together, but when they shifted their positions to angle their torsos at an incline, with Joker's back suspended off the bed, held up only by his arms around Bruce and Bruce's arms around him, that was when the achingly throbbing organ was squeezed forcibly against Bruce's stomach, loosing one of the wildest bellows from them both yet. Also at that moment, Bruce had finally pounded with all his force against Joker's prostate, and a blinding white fireworks display blurred before Joker's eyes at the contact. They moaned and keened against the other in rabid, mindless, instinctual _need_, and felt the advent of their merging souls deep in their bones, more powerful than their impending orgasms. Again and again and _again_, Bruce slammed with all the strength he had against Joker's prostate, touching a place within him that no one else could dare reach, no one but his Bat, who had permeated deep within his being at his creation. And the reactions the stimulation set off were only what could be released from the Joker when it was Batman who caused it. And this knowledge, that this explosion within his body was only for Batman, and that _he_ was only for Batman, made Joker thrust up against Bruce even more vigorously and rapidly, crying out in his plea for more as his limbs constricted around Bruce even tighter.

Had it been simple sexual release that Joker had craved, he would have urged Bruce to grab his cock and begin fisting it as to better stimulate him so they could come together. But the spirit-binding act their physical union was bleeding into, with everything Batman had denied him now being given to him in the most impassioned and intimate manner, the impossible finally coming true for them both, _that_ was enough to send Joker's dick positively _glowing_ in between their taut and straining stomachs, pulsing to nearly twice its usual size as quickly as Bruce's was, even without the direct stimulation that Bruce was receiving. It was enough to sustain Joker that he and his Bruce were reaching this moment _together_, which was what he had yearned for all along.

Finally, the collapse of the universe imminent and their tortured bodies all but crying for their souls to release them, they raised their heads from the other's shoulder and caught each other in a bruising and wild kiss. All their other kisses from the past year, tallied up and combined together, could never hope to equate to the raw emotion they now transmitted in _this_ otherworldly kiss. And with the crushing liplock and strained faces and squeezed eyelids that finally brought them into a state of shared awareness and vibration of spirit, after dancing this bizarre movement of joined hips for what they were barely aware of was well over an hour, they finally screeched into each other's mouths as they exploded their pent-up emotions in the hardest, longest, and most intense ejaculations of their lives, spilling the seed of their shared longings into and onto each another. Their uncontrollable spasms wracked the entirety of their joined forms as they hurtled past this edge together, changing their fates from that moment forward.

When at last their mutual orgasm ended, they felt the filled void of jubilation seal itself off from them, the window to luxuriate in its presence shrinking by the second, until at last it left them altogether and they cried out against each other once more. There was nothing left to hold onto but the other's unstoppable spasms of their whole body. Joker's arms fell trembling from Bruce's back, and unable to be supported by Bruce's weakened grasp on his torso he fell back to the bed. It would have ended the full contact between them had Bruce's knees not given out entirely at that same instant, caused him to fall with Joker to the bed, taking in the other's shuddering moans as they mindlessly huddled together in the mess of Joker's semen.

They didn't realize who it was that forced Bruce's withdrawal from Joker's body, nor did they fully process who it was that reached up shakily to turn off the lights and shroud them in the darkness only they knew. All they were sure of anymore was the feel of the other's skin thrumming against their own, and in that expanse of heated flesh and coiling limbs they somehow fell asleep against the body of their foe, drained of everything except what they had received from the other.

xxx

Bruce came to the conclusion that he was awake, and soon after that to the conclusion that he had fallen asleep before that. His eyes were still closed, and he could feel that he was entirely naked, and laying on a rumpled and sticky bed. The stickiness wasn't entirely surprising to him, for he had had many a wild night before, from as few people as just himself to as many as twelve others during some daredevil stunt in college. But what he was surprised at was just how…_relaxed_ he felt. His duties as Batman had entered his thoughts, but for the moment he couldn't summon up enough will to care too much about them. _That_ was what brought the first tendrils of suspicion to his mind, for him _not caring_ about what he needed to do in the city next was certainly brought on by nothing short of divine intervention.

It was then he noticed that his body was resting against the equally-naked and equally-sticky body of another man. And at that realization, the memory of what had occurred in his most recent moments of waking came roaring back to him. The Joker was beside him, and they had just made love.

He paused as he turned that sentence around his head again; sure he hadn't processed his subconscious correctly.

_He and the Joker had just made love._

It brought a sigh out of him, borne half of contentment, half of dejection. For it _had_ come to pass, and was now an unalterable fact. But it would also never come true again after tonight. And their hopeless worlds that followed would never be the same. There would be no hope, no hidden dream, to seek after anymore.

Breathing deeply once more, he opened his eyes, just barely making out in the darkness the docile form of his Joker laying in undisturbed slumber beside him. He realized suddenly that they were breathing at the same pace, and with each deep exhale from his nose a similar breath would escape Joker's nostrils. He considered trying to alter the rhythm, but decided against it. It would end everything they had just worked to achieve.

He rubbed some sleep out of his eyes and turned to glance over his shoulder to the glowing blue numbers of the digital clock. 2:26 AM. He had been asleep beside the Joker for scarcely three hours now, but something had awoken him. It could have been the grimy feel on his cock more than anything else, for it seemed coated with more than just semen and sweat. What exactly, he wasn't sure, nor was he sure exactly why it disturbed him so much. It was just, laying here on top of the restless sheets they hadn't had the strength or coherency to use, he felt…

…dirty.

He glanced at Joker one last time. The clown continued to breathe deeply at his side, limbs splayed wide open in a state of total defenselessness. He supposed that Joker didn't feel the need to shield himself from anything now, so powerful was the absolute _trust_ he felt toward his Batman. Bruce sighed again at the clown-like appearance of his clown, and then lifted himself out of bed and walked into the bathroom.

He closed the door and turned on the lights, blinded for a few seconds by the sudden light that had entered his unaccustomed eyes. But as soon as he adjusted, he was greeted by his completely disheveled appearance in the mirror. Hair sticking up everywhere, body covered in come, and…

He looked down at his cock. Plenty of dried semen, of course, but along its length were a few telltale smudges of white and red. Greasepaint. Such a notion, that the Joker in sucking his dick had left traces of himself upon him, made a glow of heat escape into his blood.

Blood…

Come and greasepaint weren't the only things on his cock, which probably attributed to his feelings of filthiness earlier. Beyond the red lipstick, there was a darker and more pronounced red liquid that coated his cock just as much as the come.

It shouldn't have surprised him as much as it did, for it wasn't an altogether foreign sight. He had been taken into many a virgin's willing bed, and sometimes these things tended to happen. But right now, under the circumstances, with _this_ person, he had been pounding so forcefully into him that…

…he had made the Joker bleed.

Not in the usual manner that they always did, where blood spilt in battle was a given. No, when they had _joined together_, he had…

…his mind flashed back to the night at the pier.

And then another image came to mind, of when the Joker had taken him into his mouth, driven by a force outside of his control, just like he himself had been forced to perform that same act those many months ago…and now he had caused the same pain to the Joker as he had been subjected to…

…he was no better a man than those that had assaulted him. Than the ones the Joker had mercilessly mowed down with his blades. But yet the Joker was even worse off than he had been, for he couldn't _see_ that fact, instead filled himself with nothing but _worship_ for the man that hurt him so, just as he hurt him night after night. And still he always crawled back to him. Always coming back for more. For more pain to himself, more of anything he could get. Even if it was the worst injury Bruce could bring himself to imagine.

Bruce stepped into the shower and turned the water on as cold as it would allow.

Joker woke with a start, an act not usually reserved for the likes of him. Usually he had raging chaotic dreams that he would wake up laughing hysterically at, whether he remembered them or not. But just now he had been immersed in the quietest of slumbers, in a sort of subconscious blackout with no dreams to speak of at all. That is, until something had shifted, and a strange ugly storm of thoughts and images flitted through his dreams nonstop, leaving him with a very unsettled feeling. Something he wasn't used to having his dreams leave him with.

He looked around him, to the stickiness he was laying in, and the completely relaxed feeling of his body, how his skin was glowing with a recent pleasure, and he remembered what had happened.

_The Batman had made love to him._

And now he was gone.

He felt on the empty space on the pillow next to him in the dark, sure that his eyes were telling him a story different than what was true, that Bats wasn't _gone_, he couldn't be, not after what had just happened, what they had silently _promised_ each other…

He then noticed the sprinkling sound of running water coming from the wall he was staring at, and then the glimmer of light coming from underneath the bathroom door. He relaxed again. Bruce was just in the shower. But turning to look at the time, the clock read 2:28 AM…

…something was wrong with Bruce.

He curled up off the bed and walked to the bathroom door, ignoring any stiffness or soreness from the much different kind of physical exertion than he was used to. Batman was always more important, and _always_ worth, any pain in the world. Once inside the room, he blinked momentarily in the sudden light on his unaccustomed retinas, and immediately turned to the closed shower curtain. Had he looked in the mirror he would have noticed the dried blood that still collected around his ass. But even if he had noticed, he probably wouldn't have cared. What he _did_ notice was that there was no steam from the shower, which meant the water was turned on cold. And if something was wrong with Bruce, he'd probably turned it as cold as it could get.

He slid the yellow curtain open a tad, met with the image of Bruce's naked back to him, brown hair sticking to his head directly underneath the water's spray. Bruce let the water run down his face and body, numbing himself to what he had done, and what he had turned into as the price for what he had craved so relentlessly, deaf to the rest of the world for a moment…

…until he felt strong, slick arms nestle around his torso, one hand snaking to his sternum, the other to his abs, and a man's wet front pressed into his back, aligning their forms seamlessly. Instantly he felt his eyes close as he all but relaxed into the body behind him, tension in his back suddenly relieved with the touch. The arms pulled him stronger into their embrace, and he knew whose arms they were, and who it was that was cradling him so in the shower. His head inclined slightly to where Joker's was, whose chin was resting on his right shoulder, and absurdly he was reminded of his dream, where they stood as close as they did now, Joker silently waiting for an answer.

An answer…

A soft kiss was pressed against his jaw, and he moved his arms to lightly grip his hands to the ones that held him. They stood there for a moment, Joker's lips gently attached to Bruce's face, until Bruce shifted in his arms, turning his body around to press their fronts together as their lips met softly. Remnants of the intense connection they had undergone earlier still lingered around their kisses, and as their arms wrapped around each other they knew it full well.

Bruce reached behind him to turn the water on hotter, this time as hot as they could get it. The rush of heat that gradually wove its way around the bathroom in vaporous steam cocooned them in an external bubble of warmth, supporting the internal suspension of surging emotions that blurred through their bodies. The semen was washed from their skin, but the power that its release had contained was never lost to them for an instant.

Bruce was backed against the tiled wall, sinking into the indulgence Joker offered him, when he felt thicker streams of some sort of pasty fluid drip between his fingers that were now cupped around Joker's face. Pausing, he broke their mouths apart and looked to what it was, and upon doing so realized that semen wasn't the only thing being washed from skin.

Joker's facepaint was washing away under the water.

Driven by a need to see the face he would otherwise never get to see if he passed up this night of opportunities, with the same inexplicable drive that had brought Joker's mouth to his cock hours ago, Bruce's hands began to sift away the layers of paint that covered the other's face. Joker smirked at what he was doing, but said nothing. If his Batman wanted to see _that_ tonight, he wouldn't stop him. Tonight wasn't about stopping each other; they'd have all the time in the world for that later. Just…not tonight.

Slowly the layer of actual skin was becoming apparent, making Bruce want to scrub harder at the greasepaint, brushing away every last smudge of black from around his eyes, every red stain from the scars, using his mouth to lick some paint flecks away. Hands and lips worked almost feverishly at the simple task, something Joker knew was not to be impeded or interrupted. This was a process for _Bruce's_ sake.

At last the tiniest traces of makeup were rubbed away, but without even pausing Bruce reached for the sample bottle of shampoo left by the hotel for guests' convenience on the shower racks, and poured some onto his hands to lather them through the dyed green hair. Soon Joker's forehead found its way to Bruce's neck, tucked underneath his chin, as the cleansing process took on a purpose of calmly stroking through the soaking locks, soothing them both. They closed their eyes in the slow rhythmic movements of fingers and palms snaking through hair, until at last Bruce tilted Joker's head back up into the water, letting his hair rinse out as he gazed upon what his efforts had produced.

It was certainly not what he had expected, but then again he hadn't really known _what_ to expect. The makeup sunk into the smallest creases on his face, pronouncing them and making him look a bit older than he really was. In fact, all this time Bruce had been under the impression that the Joker, always claiming to know something Bruce didn't, was several years older than him at least. But now looking upon that striking face with far pinker scars than usual, he realized that the opposite most likely held true. Who knew exactly how old the Joker was, but it had just struck Bruce that his age was probably very close to his own.

Joker watched Bruce's appraising face with a pronounced interest, enjoying how those blue eyes he so adored were gazing so intently upon him, never leaving his face for an instant. To have that soft focus upon him so completely made every frustration about the Bat's denial totally worth it, especially with the slight ghost of a grin that he swore was fighting to rise onto Bruce's lips.

_He was making his Bat smile._

He wanted to kiss those nearly-smiling lips and absorb every bit of that grin's essence into his own, knowing that since his own smile could be so powerful, _the Batman's_ smile must be the mixed of most potent force in the universe. And so he jumped up to those lips with his hungrily, and he was gently responded to as fingers threaded through locks now revealed to be dirty blonde, darkened under the shower's spray.

The kiss slowly broke after a time, and green eyes lazily opened to blue, staring curiously at the other's face that was now as naked as the rest of them. Bruce, still backed against the shower wall, felt Joker's body lean closer into him, and hands snaked from his dark brunette hair to the sides of his face, palms holding his cheeks in a tender curiosity. The Joker's thumbs then left their fellow digits, and traced gossamer patterns to the corners of Bruce's mouth, slowly spidering up his cheeks and back down.

Tracing a familiar pattern on his face with a faraway look in his eyes.

Bruce turned the water off. They parted and stepped out of the bathtub, toweling off separately. Joker looked at his makeup-free expression in the mirror as he did so, and wondered if Bruce saw the same thing in his face as he did in the knight's. But then again, he realized, of _course_ he did. For after all, as he had known all along and what this night proved beyond any doubt, _they were the same._

Hands shot out of nowhere and grabbed his biceps, forcing him back against the wall as his neck was assaulted viciously by Bruce's lips and teeth. He let a slight giggle pass by his throat, grinning in anticipation. _So, Batsy wants another round that badly, hmmm?_ But the way that Bruce's hands tore at his sides, slammed his shoulders back when he tried to reach forward to him, growled so feral against his jugular, his grin evaporated. He opened his eyes and looked down, but Bruce wasn't meeting his gaze. Instead he was yanked forward and shoved out the bathroom door, into the colder air of the hotel room, banged into the light switch along the way as the room lit up again, and thrown onto the bed again, his head forced into the sheets as his ass stuck up in the air.

Bruce had been enjoying their moment in the shower, and contentment had turned to awe and fervent _wishing_ when that simple face was fully revealed to him. And it only served to remind him of the paint that covered it. But he had remained sure that the Joker wouldn't think back to it and what their masks represented between them, wouldn't dwell on the barriers that kept this night from becoming routine.

But then he had traced where a Chelsea grin could be carved into Bruce's face.

Something had snapped within him. Even in such an environment and circumstances as this, the Joker had _still_ thought of…had even _considered_… No. No, no, _no._

_Still_ he thought about the reality they inhabited. _Still_ he considered what it would be like for Batman to fall and become someone like him. Still he held onto the notion that _they were the same._

If they were the same, Joker would have sliced him open just as he had done the men at the pier after committing the same act of sodomy, instead of taking it and then cuddling with him in the shower afterward. If they were the same, he wouldn't have needed to trace what _could_ have become a Glasgow smile, for it would _already be there_. If the Batman equated to what the Joker was, then they would be fucking away every night together as their city screamed around them in anarchy, and this one night would be ripped of its fragile sacredness.

Bit by bit, his mind and resolve was coming undone, as everyone the Joker had hurt before screamed their dying breaths in his ears, from Rachel, to Dent, to Lau, to the redheaded man in the burning apartment complex, to Alfred, to the eighteen men at the pier, all of which _he_ could have prevented but at some point or another had _caused_, _he_ caused those people to die and get hurt, _he_ had come up short at the critical moment, _his_ city suffered while he lived off its desperate breaths, _he_ had failed to act when his parents were murdered…

He roared savagely as he tore into Joker's entrance, but this time with no ceremony or any tenderness to speak of. Joker grunted into the mussed blankets, but clenched around the intrusion to his body, still inviting it in deeper. It shoved part of the way out without pause, then jammed in again, out and in, out and back in. All the while becoming more crazed and rough, more out of control than ever before, and the clown's groans were escalating in pitch and length as he felt his own cock erect and hardening, but utterly abandoned.

Had Bruce been in his right mind he would have stopped to gasp for air. But there was no time for that now. He screamed his turmoil into the room with each brutal thrust in, forcing his way past the horridly tight and unprepared muscle that loosed its blood once again to his assaults. His body was stabbing forward without thinking, wild and untamed, the beast within released from its dark cave at it howled in maddened rage towards the world, channeling its revenge for all past wrongs and all failures directly into Joker's body. Joker tried to buck up against him, but Bruce's hands clawed into his hips to keep him still as he pounded even harder into him. Joker's back was lurched into involuntary spasms, his fingers burying and clinging to the sheets, his toes curling upward as he yelled into the pillows at what Batman refused to stifle anymore.

Joker never resisted against the attacks on his body, but still reared up against Bruce's thrusts, slapping their flesh together even louder, in a wordless cry for more. But his requests went unheeded, as Bruce's hips pumped wildly and without compassion into his ass. His rabid shouts and roars reached a fever pitch as he felt everything within his soul crescendo inside him, all memories of preventable crimes and unnecessary deaths playing with branding clarity behind his squeezed-shut eyelids, each stab of pain at his heart responded to in kind by another inhuman stab into the coiling body stifling his cock. It was never enough though, and nothing would be enough, no amount of mindless rutting would undo the damages and bring back those that had suffered, would never change the past he hated so much with an anguished passion. All that everything would boil down to was the Joker, the monster turned human sacrifice that now took all of the Batman's fury and bottled up pain, absorbed it all, and soaked up everything the Bat threw at him. Selfishly taking this other monster's wrath for himself instead of the masses; yet, in a twisted sense, selflessly uncaring about his own wellbeing, only what he could take from his Bat. Becoming a strangely self-proclaimed scapegoat.

_They were the same._

Bruce screamed as he came in a violent flood, howling his rebellion against the truth that clanged its resolute bell through his soul. He took out everything he had into the Joker, melding his fluids to the madman's insides as viciously as the clown was melded to his shape. Joker shook with the other's uncontrollable jerking and bucking movements, and hummed a groan into the pillows as his own cock wept for the release that the crusader was now experiencing. But Bruce had been gripped in a fit of selfishness, and there was no gentle sharing this time around, no reacharound to be given when it was needed.

Bruce trembled after he was spent, and with a drawn-out shuddering gasp he looked down at the hips he still tore his fingernails into. Blood had welled up around them, as well as around his cock, for he could see it even now while still buried within Joker, slowly seeping out around the edges of the distended hole he was sheathed inside. He doubled over under the weight of the exhaustion that his spiritual rude awakening had created for his physical body to endure, and slumping slightly forward, he gripped onto Joker's hips more firmly and slowly watched himself slip out of the man. More blood and come drained out as he exited, and he breathed harshly once fully withdrawn, retreating back to himself again.

Joker rose up without warning and twisted around, grabbed onto Bruce's shoulders before he even realized what was happening, and threw him down into the pillows with just as much force as Bruce had done to him twenty minutes ago. In the blur all Bruce had time to glimpse was Joker's purpling and painful-looking cock, still swollen and requiring release after what he had just undergone. And at the position he then found himself forced into, the same position the Joker had been in just seconds earlier, he found his eyes widening at the possibility that loomed on the horizon.

Joker raised himself up on his knees, drinking in the sight before him of Bruce's body turned around for him, back muscles coiling and flexing with tense ripples, ass sticking up at his face for his viewing pleasure. He took a heavy breath at the sight, eyes narrowed with acute intensity, as his hands stretched out to Bruce's shoulders, running along his bare back on either side of his spine. At his touch the man began to quiver slightly, but beyond that there was no protest to be discerned. His hands speeding up to their ultimate destination, he reached the two tanned globes of flesh and spread the cheeks apart, taking another gulping inhale at the image produced. His throbbing dick wouldn't wait for any sort of preparation he could have envisioned or fantasized about, and thus he laid claim to what was his immediately, shoving in the head of his cock into the Batman before sliding past the rings of muscle the rest of the way in.

At the first feel of the thick and pounding cock thrusting into his ass, Bruce grunted in the shock of sensation and just how _real_ it was. His body, now on guard to defend that area of him from foreign objects, offered formidable involuntary resistance at the penis that was forcing its way into him, but the slick friction the act produced, and the burning feeling that _the Joker was sliding inside him_ seared his being and fermented even louder moans that quickly morphed to unwitting whines into the side of the pillow. His face wasn't being smothered by the bed as Joker's had been, which made every noise he uttered clear as day, and only served to increase the volume of Joker's cock with every vibration from Bruce's throat and body. Bruce's eyes bulged as he felt, just as he had those many years ago, the Joker first force his way into his life, driving past every bit of resistance Batman put up, penetrating every crack and crevice of his ideals and beliefs and filling them with tendrils of his own core, with everything that he was. And from that day afterward, just as from this moment onward, Bruce Wayne would never be the same man again.

Joker stopped his progress halfway to pause against the immense struggle of Bruce's muscles to expel him from his body, then with an act of possession, to _show_ Bruce just _how_ much he meant everything he had said, he withdrew a fraction of an inch before diving the rest of the way in within a matter of milliseconds. Bruce screamed loudly at the sudden thrust within his body, feeling his matter ripping apart from what the clown was doing to him. A feeling he wasn't quite unaccustomed to when dealing with the other, but it was never as unavoidable and elemental and purely raw as what _this_ amounted to.

Joker thrusted his way in and out, in and out, again and again with such vigor and strength he quickly lost conscious control of his actions as his instincts took over and put him in overdrive of sensation. Bruce's body shifted and writhed around his cock and throbbed with just as fierce a heartbeat, and soon he was impaling him over and over again with such rough rapidness and brutality to be akin to torturing him. It was just _so much_, better than all his fantasies combined together, and so fucking _real_ it made him cry out to the heavens as he threw his head back, his shoulders and upper body forced into a counterpoint rhythm of snapping backward as his hips snapped forward, so powerful were his movements. Bruce was screaming too, for they both had begun to feel every scar that lined Bruce's internal muscles from the tears that wicked knife had inflicted within him, never completely able to heal in light of their vicious depths and amount. The sacrilegious marks and ridges around his cock within _his_ Bruce just drove Joker into even deeper levels of unadulterated rage and madness, thrusting even harder into Bruce to end them, for it was _him_ that should have been the _only_ one to make marks of that sort inside his Bat. He should be bleeding from his anus for the first time right now like he had himself; this should not just be a sick parodying reminder of the past. The past had no place here, and that it was now asserting its place here as if it _belonged_ here brought screams of rage from Joker and screams of agony from Bruce.

On and on Joker drove himself into Bruce, each plunge inside him serving as another harsh reminder of the past they could never change, that his Bat had been ruined for him before he had even had the chance. He was so murderous now he could kill the eighteen men and half the city all over again, but it was a bitter truth that all he could do for that release at this point was thrust his hips inside Bruce with a maddened fervor, so strong but never strong enough to erase the scars around him, so fast but always too late to stop them from marring the Batman. Bruce cried out freely this time instead of around an unwanted gag of a man's testicles, but his burning throat and ass would never be enough to make the pain of that night fade completely. And he bucked up against Joker, the wet slap of their hips together sending shudders through them both, but never could the fierce screams of the past escape him in the present.

Bruce continued bucking against Joker, wanting the next thrust to make everything disappear, but Joker's frustrations continued to build as he swelled and throbbed so violently inside Bruce that he was sure the pounding could be heard for miles. Murderous and insane thoughts ran like wildfire through his mind as he built up to an impossibly fast pace, until he at last reached what he had been striving for and released in a ferocious orgasm, pounding his warm liquid erratically and frantically into Bruce. And Bruce moaned just as loudly as Joker did, for the pain of the salt poured onto his wounds made his eyes screw up just as before, the power of the act's meaning sending tremors through his bones just as chillingly as Joker meant it.

Joker had reclaimed Bruce as _his_. And there was nothing anyone could do about it anymore.

At last the stream of Joker's ejaculation slowed and came to a stop, still running through Bruce's insides. Joker still gasped and exhaled heavily and quite vocally in vigorous moans, reveling in the physical sensation of blinding release and in the far more potent spiritual act of staking his claim to the man just as bound to him as he was to the knight. Nothing could compare to this moment of triumph for him.

Bruce wasn't as vocal as he, and was barely moving against him, and as Joker looked down to the grossly-stretched hole squeezing around his cock it wasn't hard to discover why.

He let himself remain within Bruce for a few moments afterward, wanting to give Bruce a chance to adjust himself around his dick, for he had been in too much stabbing pain from the contact on his old injuries to do so earlier. He wanted his Bat to accept his claim, and embrace it as much as he did, so he lingered patiently inside him, feeling the buzzing warmth lap at his body and soul as he did so.

Finally, he felt Bruce was ready for his physical withdrawal, and he slowly pushed with his hands on the two spread ass cheeks to ease himself out of the Batman. But the crushing reality slammed back to him full-force as he continued with the action, as an obscene amount of blood gushed out of the opening he vacated. If Bruce had thought that Joker had bled a great deal from the previous two times _he_ had been penetrated, it was nothing compared to _this_. Joker's breathing quieted to a deep silence as he watched the sacred ichor flow freely from his living treasure, and a darkness grew in his eyes.

Bruce was shuddering at the renewed explosions of pain that would have been so much more fucking perfect had they not been stained with the remnants of his ordeal at the pier. He was still throbbing in the pain, he could feel it more prominently than his own heartbeat, and also as pronounced could he feel the heated liquid of his blood drip out of his body and down the insides of his thighs, just as he had those many nights ago with gravel digging into his knees instead of this ruined bedspread. Joker's palms were still resting on his cheeks, still spreading them apart, leaving the blood free to escape in greater force. He was choking back sobs and wondering why Joker still lingered there…

…when a hot tongue licked without warning at the puckered flesh surrounding his entrance, releasing his sob with a start. The sudden touch electrified him, and when its actions softly continued as lips brushed against him as well, he sank down slightly lower under the weight of the act's gentleness, sobs replaced by soft, shaking moans. Joker lapped up the blood that stained the bronzed and perfect flesh of his adversary who was so much more than that, quieting the storm of agony that had surged in Bruce's chest a moment ago. Bruce gripped the sheets tightly still, but his eyes were closed more gently now, still steeled against the pain but now softened by the velvet caresses of this most intimate of touches.

Joker paused and made to dip his head down lower to lick more blood off Bruce's inner thighs, but the spell on Bruce's mind that suspended him from his memories broke the moment the contact was withdrawn, and before Joker could reach his next destination Bruce's knees gave out completely. He sank down into the bed on his front all the way, his eyes closed, his soul shut down, and his body utterly spent. Joker's breath escaped him in an audible exhale through the otherwise-impermeable quiet of the room, then followed Bruce's descent to lay on his side next to the other's body.

His pose certainly would have left nothing to the imagination had Bruce been turned to face him, but as it was Bruce's head was slumped to his right, away from Joker. They looked in the same direction, and Joker's eyes were riveted on the thick locks of dark brown that were all he could see of Bruce's head. He was at this point so accustomed to breathing at the same rate as his Batman that it didn't register in his mind to notice how obvious it was in their exposed torsos, only luxuriated in that fact in the recesses of his mind. He did nothing but gaze at Bruce, _his_ Bruce, and give him the time he needed.

The minutes became lost together, indistinguishable from one to the next, as Joker lay on his side watching Bruce breathe on his stomach. His eyes wandered over the landscape of the Bat's powerful body, to every last muscle that sculpted his back and defined his legs, taking note of their unique vibrations in regards to his breathing. He trailed his gaze to the stains of blood that were beginning to dry around his ass, and just as he had that night he contemplated wiping it all away. But he didn't, once again, instead let it dry where it was of its own accord, letting Bruce do the same. For the next half hour he let the air fill with nothing but hushed sounds of breathing from them both, and didn't move a muscle in the entire time span besides that.

Until at one point, out of a whim he couldn't define, his right hand stirred and found its way to Bruce's back, letting out a soft pleasured sigh upon the flexing of muscle he found there, and the steady way it rose and fell beneath his touch. His hand made the slightest stroking motions across the broad expanse of the tattered skin, drifting along the same three knife scratches and yellowed bruise in a gentle soporific rhythm. His left hand, still lying at his side, barely moved as it reached out to hook its fingers loosely around Bruce's left that lay dormant beside him on the bed. And just as Bruce had earlier that night, he watched their fingers intertwine together, waiting for the slightest response that would satisfy him.

And it came to him after an endless ten minutes, as Bruce's fingers shifted to loop tighter around Joker's, linking their fingers together.

Joker looked back up to the back of Bruce's head, continuing his miniscule stroking motions on the other's back. He wanted Bruce to turn back around and meet his expression, but attempting to force eye contact would be futile and worthless. Still they lay together, unmoving save for their slight movements of hands, Bruce barely acknowledging any aspect of the world except Joker's fingers, lost within his thoughts and memories. Somehow Joker could sense that his eyes were open now, and staring straight ahead of him at the wall to his right. The room glowed dimly with the light it was bathed in, and Joker lay in silence. Waiting.

Without any prior indications, Bruce stirred underneath Joker's hand, muscles coiling to action once more. He fluidly turned himself over to lay on his back, still careful at the slight twinge his dully aching ass produced upon settling weight on it. Once flipped over, there was nothing about the knight's front that was left to Joker's imagination either, but his eyes met with Bruce's that gazed into his own. There was nothing around them but the silence and each other's expression, one that neither pleaded for reasons nor demanded apologies. An understanding flowed between Bat and Clown.

For a long time they looked at each other, until Joker leaned in an inch closer and kissed Bruce with a quick yet tender brush of scarred lips. Bruce's eyes were heavily lidded after the fleeting touch, and he continued the contact with his own response. They lost themselves to each other in the slow kiss that followed, everything unspoken the entire night so plainly meant on the other's lips. It gradually deepened, eventually tongues finding their way into the mix, and with the renewed gentle fervor that swept over them Joker rolled himself over to lie on top of Bruce. Their cocks grazed together again, making them gasp softly into each other's mouths, relying on the other's air to sustain them. Bruce's fingers buried into Joker's scruffed and honeyed locks, pulling their lips even closer together, as their mutual levels of arousal and what they signified on a deeper level came to an apex against the other's body. Cocks were soon throbbing hard against each other again, and deeper moans left from one's throat into the other's.

Joker's hands framed Bruce's face as he pulled away momentarily, gazing with adoration at the other's magnificent brand of beauty that he knew only he could fully appreciate. And that same expression was mirrored back at him from Bruce's eyes, looking up with the same wonder Joker had hours earlier when in the same position he was in now. They were breathing hard and ragged now, but all breath ceased abruptly when Joker's hips were fully lowered into position between Bruce's spread legs, and air begged to be released from their unwilling lungs as Joker slowly pushed his cock into Bruce's tightening and clenching ass. There was little to no resistance this time around, but that thought was one of the only coherent ones in Joker's mind. Bruce's mind, on the other hand, held no coherencies to speak of any longer. With each centimeter of progress deeper inside him, his face moved with the speed of a time-lapse video of a flower's bloom, as his eyes grew wide in his face, his mouth slowly gaped open, all facial muscles locked into tension, and his hand began to hit the bed over and over again in his effort to do _something_ about the blinding intensity of what Joker was inspiring within his soul. His palm thudded down again and again on the mattress as Joker continued his way in, and he gazed down in mounting awe at the face dripping worship beneath him, reaching levels of rapture no mortal should ever dare to breach. And _that_ was what he had wanted to see on Batman's face for so long it stole a few heartbeats away from him.

When they were fully sheathed together, they still couldn't breathe, so immense were the emotions threading through them, as Bruce's hand slammed down a final time against the bedspread before shaking too violently to continue. Their bodies quivered under the power of it all, as the Batman surrounded and stifled the Joker as he had always attempted to, and the Joker penetrated the Batman's core just as he had always known he needed to. But now that the moment had finally arrived and was happening between them with such power, they could barely bring themselves to take the next step together and end this overpowering suspension of stillness.

At last Joker moved out slightly, then back in, reaching even deeper inside Bruce than before. Bruce's face jarred even further into torturous bliss at the action, and fought desperately to breathe through his gaping mouth, but the weight clanging its words through both their souls wouldn't let either of them draw in air. Again Joker withdrew and returned with a deep thrust, and again their faces contorted in joy, but again they couldn't placate their starving lungs. But with each deep shove into Bruce, and with each new explosion of their faces, they found the inevitable draw for breath and what would follow immediately afterward loom closer, and at last the ultimate heaven claimed Bruce's heart and face and his loud gasp of air loosed itself in a heart-rending wail of ecstasy and everything else besides. Joker's spirit splintered at the gorgeous sight and sound combined together, and he cried out with a shout of his own and dove his head forward to rest their foreheads atop each other, eyes never leaving the beautiful gaze they were met with as their hips slammed together in a new frantic rhythm entirely.

On and on the endless paramount of bliss continued as Joker moved so deep, so powerful, and so seamless within Bruce, and their limbs entangled around the other as they moaned and cried an inch from the other's lips, the forceful sound waves from the other's screams felt within their vocal cords as starkly as their own. They rocked back and forth, up and down, so locked in unity of thought they took on the semblance of a single writhing body, not two seeking out their other half. For this final act of lovemaking was the ultimate, they knew, and with it culminated their journey together to fuse their broken fragments of their beings together until nothing remained but one pulsating entity of divine make and origin. At last, their two representations of man would intertwine into the single god they created together, never one without the other, but always linked. Always bonded within the undulating, ebbing dance they were locked in as they pitched feverishly together on the bed that had become theirs, gasping and sobbing at the painful joy matched on the other's face with their own. Their arms wound their way around each other's shoulders, their legs cinched around waists to force them deeper together, and pleading tremors escaped both their throats for the other to never stop giving them this absolution they had sought after their entire existences. And their pleas were answered full-force, for they would never stop giving this needed joy to the other, no matter the cost to themselves.

They sped up further, impossibly deep and impossibly fast, and Joker hit Bruce's prostate dead on. Bruce howled his rapt approval and felt something within him even deeper than he had known about become unlocked, knowing that only Joker could have reached and released this hidden part of him. It flooded out to meet its counterpart, and was received with Joker's drawn-out pure moans as they felt something within themselves and each other come together, yet another line in the sand erased for them to cross. And although their physical union they were entangled in would never come to pass after this night, they felt the reverberations of the inner bonds just produced from their divine spirits that they knew would never leave them. It was unwinding something powerful within them both, and it was an immortal, unstoppable, immovable strength that would remain within the chords of their hearts forever, until the stars fell out of the sky and ever afterward.

Bruce keened against Joker's hold on him as his penis was pressed between their stomachs as crushingly as their bodies were gripped together, and at the contact on his abs Joker howled even further, every single snap forward driving them to the brink of what they _needed_ over and over while their screams mounted upon every thrust against Bruce's prostate, and every stare of deepened awe they fixed each other with. Their communion was beyond any words or thoughts they could have called to mind, for they knew it only as a truth and an instinct, a compulsion and an addiction, a requirement for their survival taking precedence over nourishment or breathing. They were the same in their need for it, and they were just as equal in their capacities to dispense it, and in that innate primal knowledge they reached levels beyond vocalization, needing one final spark of union for what was just within their grasps.

They were God and Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, just one reach away from the divine connection they were destined for, were _meant_ for. So close, but one last unification had to be made, and they pleaded wordlessly into each other's tear-filled eyes for whatever the other had stored in his being to unlock the answer. The answer left their lips in more powerful a silence than any unrestrained scream could have held, for their bodies could barely handle its weight in the way the words were mouthed.

_Joker_, mouthed Batman.

_Batman_, mouthed Joker.

And with that they entered the kingdom of two men who were so much more than men, in the maddest and most grateful throes of untainted absolution of ecstasy that were never to be attained more than once in their lifetimes, and never in anyone else's. If they had been able to sufficiently express its power in a scream they wouldn't have heard it; their awareness was far past any sensory information. Their eyes were unseeing, their skin unable to register to their brains the blazing heat they felt, their faces twisted into such rapture as would have scorched the eyes to look upon, and as it was their colorless vision had shielded them from it. All their bodies could equate what their superior essences were imbued in together to were the most devastating, earth-shattering orgasms any human being could ever hope to experience. And perhaps they would remember that aspect of it in the future, but even that physical absolution was only secondary to what their core natures had undergone together.

For at that moment, that gloriously drawn-out moment that passed them by in what seemed to be hours, they had become one being.

When their bodies gave up their futile struggle to keep pace with their souls, their orgasms ended, and still unseeing and unfeeling they shuddered with pent-up sobs at the magnitude of the event. They couldn't process enough to break apart or withdraw, nor could they stand this post-climax state of near-suffering. Wildly shaking they collapsed on each other, still one breathing entity, and fell into what could not be called a coma, nor could be called slumber. They were simply lost to the physical world.

xxx

Joker, perhaps because he had been more aware and accepting of their unique bond before Bruce had been, was the first to come back to himself. He was still on the verge of unconsciousness, but it was worlds closer to home than where he and Bruce had just been. He was barely aware of the feeling of Bruce's heated flesh humming against his own, and he was content to bask in the glow he was starting more and more to be able to perceive. Soon his senses returned, and with it the reek of sex in his nostrils and the luxurious ache in his muscles, and the lingering contentment of previous release in his groin. He breathed deeply against Bruce's ear that he found his face buried against, and used what little strength his body still possessed to wrap his limbs even tighter around the body of his foe.

The strong limbs that wrapped around his own body a second later in response alerted him that Bruce was awakening as well, and the two felt their heads reposition slightly to be facing each other nose-to-nose. Still they didn't open their eyes or stir any further, and they were both quite inwardly pleased that the other declined to do so either. For however many moments they could still steal away with, they were content to lay limp in each other's arms, with nothing but their intermingling gentle breath and lulling heartbeats together to anchor them to reality.

Bruce regained the strength to open his eyes, and a second later he saw Joker's lids flutter open as well. The subdued yet so strikingly bright light in pairs both blue and green sent another languid spark of warmth through their cores, but also one of warning. Warning them that their time was running out. It was now almost eight-thirty in the morning, and with the rising sun came the advent of their separate lives again. But still they didn't move from each other, simply relaxed in the other man's arms and eyes as they savored what little time was left for them to enjoy, before the magic night took its leave forever in all but the stages of their memories.

They stirred from the bed at the same time, unsure who had instigated the first move, but decided in the end that it was better off that way; if it had been known neither one would be able to forgive him. The mess of blood and semen left behind would be thrown out with the sheets by the maids once they reached the twelfth floor, assuming it to have been left behind by Wayne and his band of merry hookers that he had undoubtedly reserved the top three floors of the hotel for tonight. No one would suspect a thing.

They started the silent quest for their strewn garments at the foot of the bed, where Bruce grabbed the lower layer of mesh while Joker put on his boxers once more. Before pulling his pants on, he walked over to where his shirt was laying, shrugging into it and buttoning it up before covering the rest of his legs. Bruce set to work at reattaching the Kevlar at his legs, and pulled his boots back on. Joker refastened his suspenders, then crossed the room again for his tie and vest.

Each went about their separate tasks as Bruce next went for the mesh that he pulled back over his torso, and as he reached for his belt on the floor Joker walked past him for his shoes and socks, the only objects still remaining at the foot of the bed. Once his shoes were laced up on his feet again, testing the blade contained within for working order, he walked back to the room's entryway to retrieve his overcoat, rifling through the pockets for what was required as Bruce refitted his cape over his armored shoulders. Joker found what he was looking for, and withdrew a small case of hair dye and his makeup tubes, and padded into the bathroom for the sink.

Bruce still stood in the doorway fitting his Kevlar onto his front as the forest green raked through Joker's hair, obscuring the sunshine locks in its signature wild color again. Once finished, he returned the empty container to his pockets and spread the colors of white, red, and black to his sun-kissed face once more. His purple gloves snaked onto his fingers just as Bruce's gloves slid onto his own hands, and it took them the same amount of time to adjust the fastenings again to their liking. When at last Joker pulled his waistcoat and overcoat over his shoulders he stepped out of the bathroom, greeted by the sight of Batman just finishing putting on his cowl.

They stared at each other for a moment, breathless that the enemy they knew so well had resurfaced in full splendor from the naked man they now knew so deeply. The pounding of the proverbial clock tolled in their minds as they now realized they were fully dressed again, and had no other purposes in the hotel room. There were scarcely any moments left for them to steal.

They took a slow step towards each other, paused. Then completed the stride and closed the distance between their bodies, Kevlar rippling against cloth as they kissed slowly and fully in each other's arms that snaked about their shoulders to hold them close. They couldn't ignore the bat insignia on Batman's chest, nor the greasepaint lathered on Joker's face, but neither could they let the events of last night go without completing the event to its fullest. Their tongues sought each other gracefully and with a quieted passion, contained in the light of their soul-binding experiences hours ago.

Their lips ceased their rhythmic movements against each other, and held together in the quiet of the moment, imprinting every last texture and feel of the other's lips, committing them to memory before they gradually broke apart for what they knew was the last time. So many emotions then rose up in Batman's chest, and he knew what he wanted to happen afterward that could never follow, and he didn't know which words he wanted to say first, which ones he even _could_ say, which were there already and which would smolder deep within his soul forever. But then it came to him that what he wanted most desperately was to answer Joker's question.

"I – "

"I know."

Their eyes opened fully to each other's, both jarred out of orbit upon hearing the rusty, ragged, hoarse voice of the Joker, and realized that they had spent the entirety of last night without so much as a single word passing out loud between them. That was why it felt so strange to hear actual speech in their ears, but then they concluded that they were, and had always been, men of actions far more than of words.

Joker's eyes took on an even deeper and solemn softness as his mouth crept into the slightest hints of a smile. "I know," he repeated in a rasping whisper. And there was nothing else that needed to be, or ever truly could be, spoken between them any further at that moment. In such knowledge Batman's mouth ghosted to an almost-grin just as Joker had, and in the last desperate act of stealing a final moment they both gently fell into the other's embrace, holding the other to them close against the world that was beginning to catch up to them, wanting that last savor of heat before it ended.

After the endless moment that couldn't have been any shorter to them, they slid from each other's grasps and walked to the door. The locks were undone, the latch removed, and they stepped out into the hallway to go their separate ways, walking in opposite directions. Batman to the ascending numbers and the window that lay at the end of the corridor, Joker to the descending numerals towards the stairs he had climbed up just last night, however impossible that fact of another lifetime now seemed.

They walked slowly away, towards their separate goals, creating more and more distance between them as their minds swirled with what they were walking away from, but their feet couldn't be halted for anything. However, gradually, their footsteps _did _slow, the weight of their fate bearing down on their united souls in full force. They were walking away from what they had craved beyond anything for a year, and after this there _was_ no going back, and there would be _no_ regrets that could be addressed. Their battle would rise up and assume its rightful place in the world as usual.

They stopped cold in the hallway, breaking the taboo of their fate ever further, daring just how far it could be stretched. In unison they turned behind them to look back at the distant form of their soulmate, to realize that the other had done the same. Blue eyes stared back at green with promises whispered and secrets known between them, silent truths that they would no longer be able to walk away from in their hearts. The iron heartbeat coming from room 1254 at the midpoint between the distance that separated them was the only sound that rang through their heads in the still hallway.

They could have been expected to damn fate to hell and run at each other to leap into their yearning arms, never to part from this dream again. They could have wildly thrown themselves at each other and rushed back into the hotel room, living off room service and never leaving the other's heat to the end of their days.

But such happy endings were not what were written for them.

They broke from the other's gaze with every last ounce of resolve they still possessed, feeling something break in the air as the other left their sights and senses, and something else far more powerful remain strong in their hearts, as the world called their fabled names.

Throughout the weeks and years to follow, they would continue on just as they had before. Joker would continue to mock Batman, while Batman would continue to beat Joker to a pulp and take him to Arkham, only for Joker to escape as he was inevitably prone to do and continue their eternal struggle. Neither would win, but neither would they lose.

They never made love again.

Plenty opportunities were presented to them to reenact the heavenly sin they had committed together, but they instinctively passed the chances by. For they knew that any other attempts to recreate the unifying transformation their souls had undergone would be ultimately futile. The sacredness of their one night together should remain untarnished by any foolhardy attempts to reach those same heights. So they abandoned those pursuits for their more urgent callings in life.

But in the brief moments that an almost-peace descended over them whilst alone except for each other, they knew the same warmth that had stirred within them was mutually felt, and had remained with them ever since the night in room 1254. For even till the inevitable moment came that they would destroy each other and the world with it at the very end, they had the emergence of their divine bond to buoy them up in their state of firm absolution. For the rest of their days together, as they both deeply knew, they were one. They were whole.

They were complete.

* * *

**A/N: I haven't been this delirious about a story ever since my first venture into slash with the first part of this storyline, my second fic "Singles Awareness Day." And looking back on the author's notes, I was fairly high at the time I posted that one. xD But look where it's gotten me now. I've been writing this one since this Sunday, Monday, and now Tuesday where I stole any moment I could get in the car and at the orthodontist to finish it up. I even brought my laptop to school. :3 But yeah, as I said, this has been in my head for WEEKS. And now it's finally here! I really hope you all enjoyed this one. :) **

**And yes, the story's end is how it ends. There's no more, it's done. This exploration under the events created is over with. Sorry. No add-ons where I contradict myself and have them establish a continuing relationship here. That's not fitting in who they are and have always been at this point. As Bruce Wayne said, sorry to disappoint. **


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